Patanjali Yoga Sutra 1.13 - Process of Abhyasa | Yoga Teacher Training | Anvita Dixit

Transcript

namaste in today's video we're going to understand patanjali's yoga sutra 1.13 in this yoga sutra muni patanjali explains to us a little bit about the meaning of the word abhyas in the previous sutra we understood that through abhyas and varagya the chittavritis or the thought waves can be brought under control and this is the whole aim of the practice of yoga to control the thought waves to bring the mind into homeostasis and be able to stabilize all our thought waves so let's get into understanding this sutra and what it stands for the sutra itself goes as tatras [Music] so now let's break up each of these words step by step and understand it even further now tatra refers to in that or through that yatnu or yatna refers to the effort and abhyasa obviously refers to the practice and now here's the key word tatra of course is through that or the second word is the key word which means steadiness then obviously yatna and abhyasa which we already understood so now let's combine all these words and create a sentence a sentence is telling us that through that or through the practice of abhyasa and varagya we start to achieve a certain steadiness in our practice and because of this we're then able to move forward on the path of yoga now here specifically since we're talking about abhyas through that it applies more to abhyas than to varagya especially since the word abhyas has also been mentioned in the sutra and now on a very practical level what this sutra is trying to tell us is that unless you have a very deep practice or you have that consistency of effort it becomes very difficult to maintain that steadiness in each stage so if you're in your yogic journey your spiritual practice and you're trying to stabilize yourself at each moment it's important to consistently keep up the practice and make it not just a practice but an abhyasa so that it really transcends the boundaries of mere practice or hard work and becomes deeply spiritual and when that happens we also start to see that we slowly and steadily become firmly grounded in our steps of yoke now in a much later chapter patanjali even explains the eight different limbs of yoga which we have made a video on and you can find that here so in this video we explain the eight different stages and just to refresh your memory the eight different stages are yum yum asan pranayama pratihar dharana dhyan and samadhi all of these are the eight different stages of yoga and through these stages we start reaching or climbing up towards samadhi and being in harmony or union internally and externally so in order to really go up and climb that eight step ladder we need to make sure that we're steady in each of the steps imagine if our asanas are kind of wobbly and we directly jump into pranayam or meditation we might be able to do it of course but the practice will not be firmly grounded because we haven't established ourselves well enough in those steps so steadiness consistency effort and practice are the hallmarks of abhyas and patanjali reiterates that it's really important to do this to move forward on our yoke sadhana so i hope this has been helpful in allowing you to understand what abhyas stands for from my personal experience too i can say that you know when we just do something for the sake of it and don't do it consistently enough we keep falling off and we keep losing the progress that we had garnered so far and so i think the most important thing that we can do is to stay at it to be consistent to really enjoy the sadhana for what it is and then keep moving forward in the next sutra we're going to understand the four key pillars of abhyas and how patanjali categorizes and defines them we look forward to seeing you in the next video until then keep practicing do share our work if you find it useful and we'll see you very soon thank you and namaste you